so that's why I fear it won't do
by Gorram.Doll
Summary: It isn't the love of the hero, but he's not just going to stand there and wait. Probably unrequited Ryro, set during X2.


**Disclaimer: I own not Pyro or Rogue or Bobby or any of the X-Men. They belong to Marvel (that I know of). Partly inspired by three songs: Mat Kearney's "All I Need", Chad Kroeger's "Hero" and Skillet's "Hero".**

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><p>It's a regular day in the regular life of your regular teenaged-mutant when it all goes down. When his life –all that he knew and all that he'd ever been through– takes that one unexpected turn that defines who he is and separates his past self from the person he's going to become.<p>

He's not the good guy. Which could be, coincidentally, the reason why she has never spared him a second glance. And he is extraordinarily ordinary in that sense. But he can vouch for himself and say that he has his own, strong notions that he stands by. His own system of beliefs he won't violate.

They tell him continuously that it's not a matter of us against them –which, yeah, he's never really fallen for that idealistic version of things– and it's sick that they're filling his mind with utopian universes where everything's perfect when the reality is that they're not really accepted. Nor will they ever fully be. Because people fear the strange, the unknown, changes, which is all they represent. The future.

He gets in trouble, he's always gotten in trouble, that's his thing. But nothing he could have ever done would cause this karmic unballance when their lives are threatened in the safety of their own haven, and they're just kids. Teenagers, at most. Children,whose home has been invaded by gun-toting soldiers, intent on... on whatever it is they were planning to do to them. He's one of the lucky few who doesn't get to find out. One of the lucky few who get to go to Bobby's perfect little cookie-cutter house in Boston.

Upon his arrival, he'd been immediately paired off with Bobby –fire and ice– but sharing a room had proved to be volatile, to put it mildly. Especially around the time she, too, arrived at the mansion. And then the fragile thread that was their friendship fell apart altogether. Because she was special, unique, from the get-go. And he'd fallen for her. Just as Bobby had declared that he 'liked' her.

It all comes down to her, after all, and he's just even more pathetically ordinary than he was at the beginning –with his abusive father and sad, pathetic past– because he's faced with every single demon of his, too soon, too fast, and it's his chance to react. Big bads are creeping up on every side, and their would-be hero is currently lying on the ground, having practically face-planted after the bullet bit his metal-covered cranium. It's about time that someone does something, anything, and if it's not him, well, who else could stand up to what they believe in, what they are?

Bobby is kneeling on the ground, lowering himself before the guns that are currently pointed at them. Rogue is doing the same, slower, more controlled, and he just looks at her. Because she's the one reason he has to try and make things right, just this once, and try and be the hero he thinks she might deserve.

So he lashes out, fire coming at his aid, and he breathes hard as he shoots it at one of the policemen, then the other, then the ones trying to creep up behind them. Because they're not the bad guys, not this time, not ever. They're just trying to get on by living. Nothing else.

He suspects he could've overdone it a little when he turns against the police cars, blows them up, and the way Marie and Bobby look at him once he stops –once he's been stopped– say it all.

But he regrets nothing; he did what he felt was his duty, and he saved them all. He protected them all. Because that's what one's supposed to do, according to his honor code.

So he says nothing, but follows them –and Logan, whose cranium is thick enough it apparently can recover from a bullet– up to their new rescuers. Who would've been too late, anyway. And he holds no more silly beliefs that they could have been the ones to save them just in the nick of time. Not when he's had to do it all on his own and, again, he doesn't regret his actions. He couldn't have just stood there and waited. It was the right thing to do.

But his heart breaks a little, inside, when Marie and Bobby are chatting quietly, away from him. Because he feels that, deep down, he did it for her. To save her. And his mind screams at him what he's forcing himself to forget –he saw them kiss less than an hour before– and she would never go for him anyway. Hero or no hero, he could never be the good guy in her book.


End file.
